In Pursuit of Brand Safety, Queer Sites Are Caught in the Crossfire

A study showed three-quarters of the examined articles on LGBT topics were flagged as "inappropriate"

Today’s brand-safety toolkits are keeping valuable ad dollars from reaching gay-centric news sites.

According to a new report from the ad-verification firm Cheq, nearly three-quarters of the articles across LGBT-friendly news sites, like The Advocate and the U.K.-based PinkNews, are flagged as brand-unsafe and potentially pornographic. Out of the 225 articles inspected over the course of the study, 164 of them—on legitimate LGBT news stories across the web—were being flagged by media buyers’ blacklists. Marked as unsafe for advertisers, these publishers are denied ad dollars that they need to survive—with sometimes disastrous results.

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